Before Owen starts talking, we decide to top up our alcohol supply. The prosecco is long gone now, after all.

I order a large glass of white wine, while Owen opts for a beer. There are a number of public rooms in this hotel, apart from the restaurant and bar, so we find an empty one and settle beside the window. A view very similar to that in the restaurant greets us, but once again, I'm more focused on the guy sitting opposite me.

He's so handsome and tanned, sleeves rolled up, hair perfectly mussed - the original golden boy of my dreams. Main star of The Owen Show, and the briefest of guest stars on The Mirren Show, once upon a time.

And we're finally about to find out what caused that damn plot twist.

He laughs awkwardly. "I honestly don't know where to start," he tells me.

"Well, I can't really help you with that," I reply. Probably slightly snippily judging by his wince. "Sorry, old habits die hard," I mutter with an apologetic shrug.

It's his turn to take a deep breath, gather his thoughts. "So . . . As a kid, I always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Galloway Haven." He clocks my confused look. "Trust me, this all ties in with that summer!"

"Context. I get it." I shoot him an encouraging semi-smile. "Do continue."

"I know it might have seemed pretty cool growing up on a caravan park, and to an extent, it was. But I used to get a hard time for it at school; I'm not really sure why, but you know what kids can be like sometimes. They find something that's different about you and use it against you.

"I tried not to let it bother me. I suppose, in a way, I even embraced it. Just kept my head down and concentrated on my schoolwork during termtime. And when my holidays rolled around, I got to let loose a bit, meet new people, and just generally have fun." A brief grin lights up his face. "I was effectively living a double life, I guess.

"But there were other downsides too. Like I mentioned to you once before, I never got to go on holiday myself. And from fairly early on in my life, I felt this pretty heavy expectation from my parents that, as their only child, I would take over the running of the holiday park at some point."

"And you didn't want that," I state. He nods in agreement.

"I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do with my life, but I knew my future wasn't meant to be at Galloway Haven. And I felt like a piece of shit for feeling that way . . . because how many people actually have the privilege of having an inheritance like that? There were probably other kids who would jump at the chance to have a ready-made successful business they could just take over, and I was an ungrateful arsehole."

"But it wasn't going to make you happy," I say gently. I would have felt exactly the same in that situation. 

"I was already certain that I didn't want to stay in Portpatrick my whole life. I figured whatever I did in the future would probably involve travel, but I felt like without an actual career path planned out, my parents would try and steer me back to the caravan park plan. So, at some point in my mid-teens, I decided to tell them I wanted to be a lawyer. I knew I was smart enough to get the results to get onto a law course, and I figured that they wouldn't try to stop me if they thought it was my dream job."

He shakes his head. "I know I should have just told them the truth, but I was young and stupid and didn't want to upset them. In my head, this was the perfect plan to avoid that. There was only one problem."

"Which was?"

Owen smiles wryly, nudging his glasses up his nose with a finger. "It turns out I fucking hated studying law."

"I'm surprised you never told me that," I say.

"It seems I made an unconscious decision at some point to not tell you anything negative," he admits. "I liked our strange little friendship the way it was, and I didn't want to drag you down. Plus I was in second year of uni by then and struggling, and my main way to escape all that other crap was the relationship I had with you."

My heart flutters. It's actually lovely to know I was a comfort to him during this time . . . but it's also a double-edged sword as I wish he would have felt able to confide in me at the time.

"So is that really why you stayed in Lanzarote?" I ask. "Because you hated your uni course?"

"That's the impression I tried to give. But in reality . . . " He bites down hard on his lip, and looks at the ground. "I failed my second year."

"Fuck."

"Indeed. Turns out when I'm not passionate about something, it's harder for me to apply myself. Shocker." He rolls his eyes. "I found out in June I'd failed part of my course and would have to resit. I didn't tell anyone; just rearranged my Lanza plans to accommodate the resits. And then I sat those just before I left. I did a lot of frantic studying that summer and thought I would manage to scrape through and no one would be any the wiser.

"But then, while I was out in Lanzarote, I found out I'd failed the resits too."

Suddenly the mystery from my past is starting to make sense as the pieces fall in place. The timing. The lack of contact all of a sudden.

"I'm guessing you didn't deal with it well?" I lean forward, lightly stroke his hand. He snorts.

"World's biggest understatement." He raises his eyes to meet mine, and they're stormy with emotion. "I pretty much fell apart, Mirren. I wasn't used to failing as it was, and the resits had been weighing on my mind for so many weeks. I knew I didn't want to repeat the year, knew I didn't want to study law anymore, but I'd had this plan and it had all fallen apart. I was a wreck.

"I hadn't really realised until that point how much anxiety I'd been holding onto under the surface - the worry about my parents' expectations had been playing on my mind for a long time, and my brain was racing, constantly trying to work out what I was going to do next. I couldn't contact anyone. I felt like a total failure. The only person I really wanted to talk to, actually, was you . . . But I somehow felt like I couldn't because I hadn't told you any of the backstory." He sighs. "Ultimately, it all came to a head when I had a panic attack one night in the bar, and I ended up spilling my guts to my boss. That's when he suggested I extend my stay in Lanzarote, just to give me the breathing space to get my head together.

"I wish I'd just confided in you back then though." He runs a hand through his hair, his face pained. 

 And I wish once again he'd felt able to reach out to me, so he didn't have to revisit the past now - my heart is hurting for him as I realise what a mess he must have been at the time. Yes, I'd been sad that the boy I'd liked had pretty much dropped off the surface of the earth . . . but I hadn't known that his world had temporarily fallen apart.

"I did have a feeling something must have went wrong for you," I say slowly. "I should have reached out to you, but I was too stubborn."

He shakes his head again. "Honestly, Mirren, even if you'd tried harder, I don't know if I would have actually told you the truth at that time. So please don't beat yourself up over that. This was all on me, and my behaviour was shitty. I felt like I didn't actually deserve a chance with you either, and my brain decided it was a good idea to push you away before you realised what a loser I was, too. Looking back, I was always a bit surprised you didn't block me everywhere sooner."

"I wanted to be there for you," I explain. "I was so worried about you. In the end, I only blocked you because of that post you were tagged in."

"The picture of me and Francesca?" He asks. His face falls. "I thought that might be the case."

"I assumed when you finally asked to talk to me that you were going to tell me you were together. And I really didn't want to hear that."

"No," he says softly, eyes sad. "I wanted to tell you I was coming home. I wanted to tell you everything in person."

Oh.

Author's note: I hadn't considered this until someone in the US commented, but just wanted to make the point that university tuition is free here - to an extent, at least!